An Institutional Fairy Tale
by IronRaven
Summary: People are giggling at Storm and Wolverine. Why? Someone had better start sharing the joke, or something primal and elemental is going to lose it.
1. Chapter 1

**An Institutional Fairy Tale**

Need a break, need to do something funny. Work sucks, I'm in an odd spot for Spring Break, and trying not to get distracted on a new story. So this is just to work out the cramps in my brain.

This is shortly after Spring Break, but there are no spoilers.

_---x_

They'd been quietly involved for a few months now. They hadn't told very many people, only a few of those were closest to them. Here, that was very close indeed. Of course, those who knew them could see it. Especially when they were alone and thought no one could see them.

Ororo had the knack to make anything look elegant, even jeans and a sweatshirt. Or maybe it was just that anything looked elegant on her, made to flow with lithe body language that was regal and hinted at great power under the skin.

Logan was always going to look like a roughneck. Yes, he'd shown on one or two occasions that he could clean up extremely well, but he could never cover up a rough and tumble life built on a solid bedrock of physical labor.

When they were together, he always felt slightly like a caveman before a goddess. There were those who thought she was, even now. If his regenerative powers worked as well as some thought, maybe he had been a caveman. Wind and water, earth and fire. They were elemental. The very thought made Logan chuckle.

Some of the kids had chuckled seeing them looking over their shopping list at breakfast. They'd shared a look and a shrug- they'd both heard a lot of the rumors about them. Much racier than reality, and worthy of a chuckle at best. They just wouldn't respond past a shrug were the kids could see them. Let the kids think that lightening bolt in the night had been something more than it really was- he'd found out she didn't like being tickled.

They'd spent the morning running errands, starting with the lumber yard, then the greenhouse, and finally the grocery store. It shouldn't have surprised them, but the kids could eat. They were both getting ready for the spring's rebuilding and replanting. April and May were transformational months on the grounds of the Xavier Institute- as they prepared for the new students who'd be joining them in the summer and through the year, the land as well as the home changed.

Then Remy and Kurt had seen them and had done their best to keep straight faces. But it wasn't enough. When Storm asked them who was they were pranking this time, the two had grabbed their sandwiches and bamfed for parts unknown.

"What's gotten into them?"

"I don't know, but I'd be careful opening my door if I was you." Someone was in for a demonstration that with age and responsibility didn't always come maturity. Those two could bring the the mischeviousness in each other, but it was understandable- Kurt hadn't had friends until he got to the Institute, it hadn't been possible, and Scott was his friend but also his team leader. Since Evan left, Kurt hadn't had someone who was his equal, Scott could still give him an order on a mission, and Kurt had accepted he might have to lead the younger students. And Remy hadn't had a chance to be anything normal as a boy either. They were 19 and 20 respectively, but if the girls weren't watching them, those two could act like they were about to turn 13.

Then Kitty came into the kitchen. She couldn't look at them. She started giggling.

"Kitty, what is it?" Storm was confident that Logan would have told her if something was amiss.

"Ya gonna let us in on the joke, Halfpint?" More giggles made Logan growl. That just made Kitty laugh harder. She had to sit down, putting her head on her crossed arms.

"Whats so funny?" The glare of both senior instructors brought Rogue up short as she came into the room along with the Professor. They'd been rearranging room assignments to try get the new students in, and hoping that there would be any crisis enrollments. As much as Rogue was opposed to barracks-like bunk rooms, they were facing the possibility of just that, and in the lower levels where the were no windows.

Logan's answer was wordless, jerking a thumb toward where Kitty was trying to get her laughter under control. "Oh. That." Rogue knew she couldn't hide the grin. She turned an interesting shade of pink, trying to find a safe way to answer and not laugh.

"I'm sorry Ororo, Logan, that might be my fault. I may have made a pun at your mutual expense this morning." A sheepish grin was not what one often saw on the Professor's lips.

"What did you say, Chuck?"

Before Xavier could answer, Rogue giggled as she gestured vaguely at Ororo's red, hooded jacket and shrugged. "Storm, it was yah sweatshirt. He called yah two 'Leggy Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolverine.'"

Ororo's left eyebrow twitched up.

Logan's right eyebrow twitched up.

**_---_Author's Notes:**  
Most of the staff is a little squirrelly.

Rogue and Remy were both raised to be tools to used, as weapons. (No wonder they get what is in Laura's head.) Kurt was the loved monster who was hidden away for his own safety. The only one of the four junior instructors who was normal was Kitty. The four of them present a very versatile and powerful team for quiet activities.

As for Charles making a joke, I remember when he used to laugh in the printed Marvel'verse. He had a wicked wit, once, a long time ago. It has been burned out him.

It was good to have Charles Xavier laugh again.


	2. Chapter 2

**An Institutional Fairytale  
Chapter 2  
**

Ororo slipped her jacket off and hung it on the back of her chair. "I'd forgotten how heavy this thing is. I can't believe my sister hung onto it."

"I'm surprised you had it at all." Logan had been surprised a lot recently. Not the least by Storm telling him that sometimes she liked a few sets of pool and a couple beers. But the heavy biker jacket didn't fit with the image he had of the normally elegant and slightly aristocratic woman.

"It used to have chains on it.." Ororo smiled at his surprised blinks. "Back when I was young and angry and had a mohawk."

_Mohawk? Storm?_ He must have been staring- he shook his head when she playfully reached out and pressed on his forehead, trying to push him over with one finger. He slipped into his chair and waived the waitress over. "Anything else I should know about?"

"Hmm..." She ran a fingernail through a circle of condensation left by an earlier patron's bottle. "Like ex-husbands? Current husbands? Dead husbands in shallow, unmarked graves? Kids?" With each question, Logan got paler. He was too easy. "None of the above."

She ordered a pair of beers when the waitress appeared.

_-if_

Logan frowned at the table. He went around to the other side. No, the shots weren't much better here. He glanced up at Ororo. She gave him a teasing smile as she chalked her cue."You did that on purpose."

"Me? My dear Logan, I'm no telekinetic." Her laugh was like chimes in the wind. She hadn't shot pool in years.

"Didn't say you were cheating, darlin'. Just doing things on purpose." He studied the angles again. "Six in the corner." He smiled as tapped the ball, bouncing it off the sides twice to put the called ball into the far corner pocket. The next two balls also fell as ordered.

"Thank you for removing obstacles in my way." She leaned forward, letting her back arch. She knew he was watching- if she was a cat, she'd be embarrassed by what her tail would be doing. She could feel Logan's eyes on her. She would never admit that she liked how he was looking at her, at least not out loud. The next four shots finished her half of the balls, and put the eight ball to bed.

_-if_

Ororo had asked to leave the bar earlier than Logan had expected. He was very concerned, but she had someplace she wanted to take him. He did like riding with her on the back of his bike, her arms around him. He was grinning inside his helmet as they got closer to a spot he'd cruised past many times, looking for certain vehicles, especially for Lance or Duncan's vehicles. He still smiled at the memory of Jeanie yelling at him after a date with that scumbag that got interrupted by a growling animal.

He craned his head around. "You want to stop here?"

Ororo was grinning as she pulled her helmet off and shook out her hair. The smile lit up her face and made her look like about twenty- it was playful and impish. "The view here is lovely."

Normally, Logan would have been noncommittal on the view. The city glow was strongest to the south and west, but it was all around. He'd have rather been able to see more stars, but the lights turned Ororo's silvery-white hair into a halo. He hung his helmet off the handle bars as he breathed in her scent. "You are so beautiful."

"As are you, my dear Wolverine." Her long, slim fingers curled under his chin, feeling the roughness of the thick, coarse beard, tipping his face up.

Their lips touched lightly, teasingly, like a dry brush and canvas.

_-if_

As the gate opened, Logan frowned inside of his helmet. "When did we get a gargoyle?"

The figure on the roof waved to them. The hand glinted in the moonlight. "Logan, did you tell Laura to keep watch?"

"No."

Logan's gene-daughter was waiting for them at the garage, arms crossed, when he stopped the bike. "You're late."

"Excuse me?"

"Curfew is 2230 unless you have permission."

It was the week after graduation. Most of the students were gone. Normally a weeknight had a nine pm curfew with a six o'clock check in if you were going to be missing dinner. On the weekends it was ten-thirty; it wasn't a school night. Logan looked at his watch. It was ten-thirty eight. He scowled at her. "Only by a few minutes."

Ororo was trying hard not to laugh at the situation. Laura was taking this very seriously. "Laura, we are instructors and adults."

"So?"


	3. Chapter 3

**An Institutional Fairy Tale  
Chapter 3**

This is after **Weapon neXt**. I wasn't originally going to be posting it yet, but I need to post something. **  
**

Sometimes, you don't want them to cry weeweewee all the way home. You want them to run, shrieking in terror until they can bar the door.

_-iy_

Logan hated the mall. Too many people. Too many different smells. Too many different hiding places. He'd worked a table top exercise just a few weeks ago with some of the kids where they were in the mall, and a bunch of assholes with guns and explosives took the whole place hostage.

All the little marks on the map for the hostages died. It wasn't that the X-men had done the wrong thing. There was no right thing to do. Too many hostages, too much space, too much openness. It was the same problem the Russians had had with their theater a couple years earlier. He and Scott and the other team leaders had puzzled over it, and decided that they wouldn't want anything to do with a mess like that unless the hostages included Xavier Institute students.

As always. They would not intervene unless metahumans were involved. That was Xavier Institute policy.

There were more reasons to hate the mall though, like there was an entire store devoted to perfume. As sensitive as his nose was, it was like being stomped on by an elephant made of flowers just walking past. He remembered a time one of the workers at the store had sprayed the air as he walked past- Logan's eyes were itching, his nose was stuffed up, and it felt like he'd gargled with battery acid. The effects passed in a second once he was out of the noxious cloud, but he'd debated tossing the young man (he was pretty sure it was a guy- it had been a rather androgynous person) over the railing. But only for a second.

But the worst part was that the young ladies liked certain stores. Yes, he did like what Storm bought at some of those places, but the same part of his brain wanted to just nuke the entire county because he knew that the guys liked it when the young ladies wore that kind of thing to. At least Laura didn't shop there, she was too practical. It was nice/horrifying, but not practical At least he didn't think she shopped there... He hoped she didn't...

He knew that he was probably over protective of the girls- weren't they X-men? They were also ladies. The contradiction didn't bother him in the least. At home, in soft clothes, they were young women and his manners said to treat them a certain way, even when they yelled at him that they were 'big girls' and that this was the 21st century. Fine, once they were in uniform, they were X-men, and he could knock them down, make them sweat and chew them out in training the same as he did the guys.

Growling, he sat on the bench at the corner of the mall, where he could watch all of the upper promenade level, the escalators, and the main floor at ground level. He'd wait, and think about something that didn't make him think murderous thoughts.

After a while, he heard a voice. "Hey there. Looking for a good time?"

He looked up- she looked about 18, which meant she was anywhere from 14 to 25. He hated modern fashion. She was about his height, blond, green eyes, about a hundred pounds of congealed cute, he could tell she was bubbly and perky. " 'Scuse me?"

"You just looked kinda lonely. I know a place, if you wanted some company."

Yep, he was being propositioned. By someone young enough to be his daughter. He raised an eyebrow. Was she stupid, crazy, or had someone dared her. "What did you have in mind?"

She leaned down closer, stroking her fingernails from his shoulder to his elbow. The were glittery pink with white tips. He could smell her strawberry flavored gum she'd been chewing, the hibiscus scented shampoo she used. "Anything you want, if the money is good."

Part of him wanted to shout out if anyone had lost a daughter and would the please come save him from her. This was like something in a bad dream. "How old are you? How did you get here?"

She grinned. "19." He could tell she was lying. "I have a car."

"Prove it, show me your keys."

She smirked as she pulled them out of her purse. Ford, looked like the type of keys they use for sedans. They'd bought a couple of their Taruses for the Institute at repo auctions- plenty of space, easy to fix, decent fuel economy, cheap to fix, good solid frames, not embarrassing, but not showy either. Good cars for a bunch of young drivers to have access to, and common enough that they didn't stand out if one was used for something else like surveillance.

"Ok, darlin'." He felt a cold fury. If she was serious, she was placing herself in more danger than she knew. If it was a game, she'd find herself biting off more than she could chew one of these days. Damnit, Sabertooth would... "What if my idea of a good time is to screw you to death, screw you some more, then slice you up into little strips that I'd turn into beef jerky and sell it to truck stops?"

She went about the color of the grey paper tabloids used, her eyes wide. She didn't move, like a rabbit hypnotized by a snake. He felt a little queasy but the words were out of his mouth, but he could see Victor doing that. And while Sabertooth was crazy, he wasn't the only one that crazy- there were normal humans who would do that and worse. Time to follow through. "Consider yourself lucky: I'm not that kind of guy. The next guy might be. Go home. Tell your parents you love them, and go to bed- it's a school night."

She nodded, and stepped back, trembling lightly. She almost tripped over a potted plant before she could turn her back on him. She kept glancing over her shoulder at him as she made her way to the elevator. He gave her credit, she didn't run.

Logan couldn't go back to his paper. He half expected to see people in uniform wanting to talk to him any second. A few years ago, would he have done that? He didn't know. He felt someone watching him from across the open area- Ororo and several of the girls. He didn't let his embarrassment show as he got up. He did not want to think about what was in the pink and white striped bags the girls were carrying when he met them half way there.

"Logan, what was that about? It looked like you scared that poor girl half to death." Ororo's eyes were narrowed and suspicious. That girl couldn't have been more than 18. He'd done... something.

"I'll tell you later. I'm just glad none of our young ladies are that stupid." His voice dropped to a mutter meant only for his own ears. "We're raising them better than that."

**-Authors notes**:

This is based on a true story. The dialog is almost unchanged. I'm not proud of what I did. But I'm pretty damn sure she'll never do anything that damn stupid again. I'm in my mid-30s and look older. I've got the kind of body language you associate with a cat at a mouse convention, a limp, scars, long hair for a guy, and the start of a ZZ Top beard. I'm taller than average, and a lot wider through the shoulders- I have to take some doors sideways. I keep work gloves on the strap for my jack sack, and every so often someone looks at my bag and asks if I've got a cannon in there or something similarly half-witty. I can look like a very scary dude when I'm having a bad day, and that is most days that don't start with S.

Worst part is, I'm not that scary. Just often annoyed with a world that can't get it's stuff together. But she didn't know that. For all she knew, she was trying to pick up a guy who made Jack the Ripper look like the Toothfairy.

She probably thought she was being funny, or she'd been dared. But I live in a college town- lots of young ladies wake up strange places. In the past five years we've had two girls kidnapped and killed, and two just disappeared off the face of the planet that were popular enough that people missed them. And my town could fit into one section of Yankee's stadium, even with two universities and three colleges in it. A couple thousand people disappear every year in the US. They aren't all kidnapped by aliens or bigfoot, killed by the mob and ground up into sausage or otherwise disposed of cleanly, or disappeared by the government as politically inconvenient- that only accounts for about 40, 200 and 500 people respectively. So where are they all going? They aren't all running off and restarting their lives, or dropping dead of heart attacks or anaphylactic shock on the backside of some mountain. In an era when you can't get a job or a bank account without an SSN and tax reporting, unless you are completely living in the informal economy, it just doesn't happen.


End file.
